ke, observing how white she
looked, asked her if she felt faint.

"No, thank, you; I am only tired," said Lesley.

"You would like some tea, perhaps?"

"Thank you," said the girl, rather hesitatingly. Nobody drank tea at the
convent, and in her visits to Lady Alice she had not cultivated a taste
for it. "I think I would rather go to bed."

"You must have something to eat before you go," said Miss Brooke, drily.
"Here, let me feel your pulse. Yes, you need food, and I'll send you up
a soothing draught as well. You need not look so astonished, my dear:
don't you know that I'm a doctor?"

"A doctor! _You!_" Lesley looked round the room as if seeking for some
place in which to hide from such a monstrosity.

"Yes, a doctor--a lady doctor," said Miss Brooke, with grim but not
unmirthful emphasis. "You never saw me before, did you? Well, I'm not
in general practice just now; my health would not stand it, so I am
keeping my brother's house instead; but I am fully qualified, my dear, I
assure you, and can prescribe for you if you are ill as well as any
physician in the land."

She laughed as she spoke, and there was a humorous twinkle in her
shrewd, kindly eyes, which Lesley did not understand. As a matter of
fact, her innocent horror and amaze tickled Miss Brooke immensely. It
was evident that this girl, with her foreign, aristocratic, and Catholic
training knew nothing at all of the strides that have of late been made
in the direction of female emancipation; and her ignorance was amusing
to Miss Brooke, who was one of the foremost champions of the woman's
cause. Miss Sophia Brooke, whose name was on every committee under the
sun, who spoke at meetings and wrote half a dozen letters after her
name, to have a niece who had never met a lady doctor in her life
before, and probably did not know anything at all about women's
franchise! It was quite too funny, and Miss Brooke--or Doctor Brooke, as
she liked better to be called--was genuinely amused. But it was not an
amusing matter to Lesley, who felt as if the foundations of the solid
world were shaking underneath her.

If she had heard of women doctors at all it was in terms of bitterest
reprobation: she had been told that they were not persons of
respectability, that they were "without the pale," and she had believed
all she was told. And here she was, shut up for a year with a woman of
the very class that she had been taught to reprobate--a woman, too, who,
although no